Colorado Town Offers 1 Gbps for $60 After Years of Battling Comcast • Hacker News Board

Re: Colorado Town Offers 1 Gbps for $60 After Years of Battling Comcast

#451

Post by michilumin » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 9:41 PM UTC

polpo wrote: post #124

Longmont, just south of Fort Collins, was the first city in Colorado to build out a municipal ISP, and it’s inspired surrounding cities to do the same. It’s where I live and it was a not-insignificant reason why I chose to move here. So far it has been a resounding success for the city. The buildout completed on time and adoption rates are higher than initially expected (the city planned for 37% but the last number I…

In Colorado here as well, but unfortunately unincorporated Jeffco. Really hope this begins to spread through Colorado, since right now our only option is Comcast.

If it does well for Fort Collins and Longmont, maybe other areas will try it as well.

Re: Colorado Town Offers 1 Gbps for $60 After Years of Battling Comcast

#452

Post by fiter » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 9:44 PM UTC

akouri wrote: post #446

I find it so hard to grapple that much of SF / Silicon Valley (supposedly the "innovation hub of the world") is subject to near-monopoly by Comcast. AT&T's offerings are 40mbps/5mbps in 2019. So that's obviously not an option. Even Comcast only has 250mb/10mb. In _silicon valley_. In 2019. I had WebPass in one building I was in in 2014, and had symmetric gigabit for $40/mo. Nothing like that has existed in any of the…

Sonic is doing a fair amount of fiber in the east bay. In fact, I just got my fiber connection installed today in South Berkeley. I know AT&T is also doing fiber in the peninsula and in the east bay. I just checked today and the place I previously lived in Oakland now has fiber availability. Large areas of the Richmond and Sunset districts in SF have had fiber installed. It's changing.

Re: Colorado Town Offers 1 Gbps for $60 After Years of Battling Comcast

#453

Post by Cerium » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 9:56 PM UTC

akouri wrote: post #446

I find it so hard to grapple that much of SF / Silicon Valley (supposedly the "innovation hub of the world") is subject to near-monopoly by Comcast. AT&T's offerings are 40mbps/5mbps in 2019. So that's obviously not an option. Even Comcast only has 250mb/10mb. In _silicon valley_. In 2019. I had WebPass in one building I was in in 2014, and had symmetric gigabit for $40/mo. Nothing like that has existed in any of the…

I'm in San Jose and have gigabit symmetric service from AT&T. If internet is a serious issue for you, there are various areas that have good service.

Re: Colorado Town Offers 1 Gbps for $60 After Years of Battling Comcast

#454

Post by alexis_fr » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 10:00 PM UTC

linsomniac wrote: post #269

CenturyLink, in particular, but also Comcast, has brought this upon themselves... They are doing everything they can to protect their existing infrastructure and do as little as possible to upgrade services. I'm thinking of back in '98 when QWest was rolling out DSL, the would only connect you to a central office. They refused to put DSLAMs in the pedestals, because if they did that they had to allow CLECs to do the…

I’m in a major city in France and I use a gigabyte fiber for my 4 employees and it’s 19,90€ per month. And at home I have ADSL and the 3G is faster (12€ for 100Go per month, 8Go in Europe). For the first time, France has one thing working correctly ;)

Re: Colorado Town Offers 1 Gbps for $60 After Years of Battling Comcast

#455

Post by philjohn » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 10:02 PM UTC

jyrkesh wrote: post #399

linsomniac wrote: post #269

CenturyLink, in particular, but also Comcast, has brought this upon themselves... They are doing everything they can to protect their existing infrastructure and do as little as possible to upgrade services. I'm thinking of back in '98 when QWest was rolling out DSL, the would only connect you to a central office. They refused to put DSLAMs in the pedestals, because if they did that they had to allow CLECs to do the…

I'm in a combo CenturyLink / Comcast market, and it's AMAZING what competition between even just those two firms does to my offerings. Switched from Comcast's $90/mo gigabit with a 1 TB data cap and only 90 Mb/s upload to CenturyLink's $60/mo symmetric gigabit with no data cap. I have a contract-less "lifetime price guarantee", they did free install (which included running a fiber line from the pole to my house with…

> free fiber endpoint box (I don't know what it's really called)

That would be an Optical Network Terminal, or ONT

Re: Colorado Town Offers 1 Gbps for $60 After Years of Battling Comcast

#456

Post by jwm4 » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 10:03 PM UTC

tonyb wrote: post #129

jkilpatr wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "upgrading our network" They actually where not doing this before because it's probably a bad idea. Modern cable networks look like this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_fiber-coaxial#/media/Fi... Fiber goes to copper which then splits out to a large number of homes. The copper line near your home can do multiple gigabit but that needs to be shared with everyone else on the tree. So selling higher speeds is ea…

Fiber to the home/GPON is also a shared medium. One OLT (the fiber device in the headend) port generally goes out to a splitter in the field that then goes to 128,64,or 32 customers which has about ~2.5 gbps of downstream speed that is probably also shared with the video service. That is generally more capacity than DOCSIS but it isn't a fiber straight from the customer house back to the provider network. Modern DOCS…

A technically and financially accurate post.

Perhaps not mentioned (that i see thus far) is how density drives the economics of telecom network deployment. Network will be deployed (and upgraded) in direct proportion to the availability of revenue (homes passed)/dollar of capital investment. Those who live in high density cities will have abundant (1Gbs) and relatively cheap bandwidth. Most people living in remote, rural areas will not receive abundant (1Gbs) bandwidth unless someone subsidizes it.

I live inside the perimeter in Atlanta, GA, where ATT provides a 1Gbs fiber connection for $70/month. I just tested it at 878 Mbs down, 650 Mbs up. And that performance has been consistent for over 2 yrs, with no outages except after hurricane or ice storm.

Before that, Comcast couldn't deliver 25 Mbs and went down at least once a month, for hours at a time. Comcast now offers a 1 Gbs service here, but I wouldn't trust its reliability.

Chattanooga, TN has three plus private ISP's. The local power company (EPB) fought AT&T and Comcast tooth and nail to obtain its telecom services license from the City of Chattanooga/Hamilton County. EPB offers 1 Gbs for $68/mo, 10Gbs for $300/month - residential service - and according to family members, the service is excellent (TV and phone offerings also available). EPB offers 1Gbs service to 98% of the city. Neither At&T nor Comcast are close in coverage, but both claim to offer 1 Gbs service.

The key to EPB's success - they already owned the rights of way required for fiber infrastructure (electric grid), they had the capital to commit to the long term investment required for telecom payback (7-10 years), they deployed a fiber-based network from the outset, they hired experienced telecom people to run that business, and they were/remain a respected corporate citizen dedicated only to serving their local area.

Those rights of way are a key consideration often overlooked when outsiders evaluate telecom economics. LOTS of legal and regulatory (local, state, federal) hurdles involved in obtaining them if one doesn't already have them.

Re: Colorado Town Offers 1 Gbps for $60 After Years of Battling Comcast

#457

Post by a_e_k » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 10:06 PM UTC

yellow_postit wrote: post #435

bahmboo wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't appear accurate. If you happen to live in a building (condo/apt) that is supported by one of the other gigabit companies you list then you are good to go. But that is a very very small part of the population. Otherwise Seattle has only 2 options for physically connected internet: Centurylink and Comcast. And they are priced accordingly.

Yup and there are large swaths of Seattle where Century Link doesn’t have competitive speeds to Comcast. Cities should have even more competition for service providers than rural areas.

Yes! I live in Seattle and whenever I try their checker it tells me "Great! You qualify for up to 12Mbps" for $45/mo. I'm not a fan of Comcast, but that Century Link offer is a poor joke in comparison.

And this is despite living less than three blocks from a Century Link building crammed full of machines (I can hear the hum from the sidewalk when I go by). I don't get it.

Re: Colorado Town Offers 1 Gbps for $60 After Years of Battling Comcast

#458

Post by gsk22 » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 10:08 PM UTC

jyrkesh wrote: post #399

linsomniac wrote: post #269

CenturyLink, in particular, but also Comcast, has brought this upon themselves... They are doing everything they can to protect their existing infrastructure and do as little as possible to upgrade services. I'm thinking of back in '98 when QWest was rolling out DSL, the would only connect you to a central office. They refused to put DSLAMs in the pedestals, because if they did that they had to allow CLECs to do the…

I'm in a combo CenturyLink / Comcast market, and it's AMAZING what competition between even just those two firms does to my offerings. Switched from Comcast's $90/mo gigabit with a 1 TB data cap and only 90 Mb/s upload to CenturyLink's $60/mo symmetric gigabit with no data cap. I have a contract-less "lifetime price guarantee", they did free install (which included running a fiber line from the pole to my house with…

If you have no contract, what's to stop CenturyLink from reneging on the lifetime price guarantee?

Re: Colorado Town Offers 1 Gbps for $60 After Years of Battling Comcast

#459

Post by rayiner » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 10:10 PM UTC

rsj_hn wrote: post #400

rayiner wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GDP per capita is a proxy for local price level, and it absolutely matters. Running a fiber service is overwhelmingly a matter of labor costs. Everyone from employees who deal with permitting and approvals to guys who run the cable to network operators to customer support representatives. The stuff that’s made in China—the fiber and the equipment, is a small part of those costs.

> GDP per capita is a proxy for local price level No, this is incorrect. GDP is a proxy for production in nominal terms. If it were just a proxy for local price level, then every place would have the same real income and would differ solely by relative prices. That the U.S. has a a GDP/capita that is 4x times some other nation does not mean that prices are 4x lower in the other nation.

GDP is a measure of production in nominal terms. It’s a rough proxy for labor prices (the kind of price I was talking about). That’s because a dominant component of GDP is personal incomes.

Re: Colorado Town Offers 1 Gbps for $60 After Years of Battling Comcast

#460

Post by fragmede » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 10:21 PM UTC

pkaye wrote: post #367

virgilp wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have the 1Gbps connection, I took the cheaper 400Mbps one. But they're fairly good at actually offering the promised bandwidth. Again, internet is one of the very few top-notch things here, better than most of the world.

What is the effective speed you can get because of bandwidth throttling done by remote servers? Can you get close to 400Mbps to cloud storage for example? Currently I have 150Mbps and been wondering if increasing it would be worth the extra cost.

It really depends on the cloud storage provider, and once you have gigabit, you can tell who's being cheap with their CDN/local POP. Some downloads scream along and gigabit is worth it. It's ridiculous to me that local disk can be the bottleneck. (This is with a spinning disk. An SSD, less so.) Others downloads... don't.